


Just a Computer

by HappyHour



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Hacking, Projecting, Uncanny Valley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 11:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6468961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyHour/pseuds/HappyHour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A computer is just a computer, a dumb thing that's very well known and documented. However, when Jazz needs to hack one, he gets into a bit of trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a Computer

"I can do it." Jazz said, his hands ready to touch the casing of the primitive human computer and hack it.

"This is the only copy we have of the data. If we can't do it, then Prowl, Trailbreaker, Perceptor, Tracks, this is the only shot we have at it, to find them and save them." Chip said. "Not even I can hack this thing without guessing the password, and if you guess too many times -"

"Then I won't fail." Jazz smiled. "I know this sort of security and I know what to do in these sort of cases."

"Well, it's the only chance we have." Ratchet said. "If we had Prowl here, or Teletraan-1 working, then we would have other ways to track the thieves down, but right now it looks like you're it." He looked at Jazz. "Chip, you're the one who knows the human computers the best, you got the final say."

"I would say do it." Chip said.

"Just watch me do my magic." Jazz said and put his hands on the casing. Already his EM field extended to sense all the parts of the computer, all the circuitry and switches and the small intricate parts of it, mapping out the structure of the computer, including the encrypted hard drive and the part of it that would scramble the hard drive into uselessness if it detected intrusion or there were too many attempts at guessing the password.

Jazz bypassed that, faking his own signal in the circuitry in the computer. He quickly ran into a firewall.

It wasn't like any other firewall. It was cold, unfeeling, unaware. All Firewalls within both Autobots and Decepticons had this personal taste to it, and a hacker could detect the first sign of personality within them. As Jazz banged up against the firewall, trying to break it down he thought he detected a tiny bit of wavering, a sign of weakness. But that only existed within a living being, a living computer, armorclad lifeforms. He stopped attacking to make sure, but the firewall was as the first time he saw it, cold and unfeeling and unaware of everything and only protected data, nothing more.

As he attacked the firewall with a well-aimed virus he was very well aware that if he did something like this against a Decepticon they would be trembling, afraid as their protection was being stripped away. A memory of a particular harrowing breakin he made came up in his mind, making him relive it and projecting it on the human computer he was hacking.

Once the firewall went down, Jazz trembled, taking a moment to take another measure of the computer. Still cold and unfeeling and unaware of everything. Still just a thing, not a Decepticon, not an Autobot.

Next step, figure out how to hack the encryption and decrypt the hard drive. With the firewall broken down he had also broken down the counters on the intrusion attempts. He could let go and let Chip brute-force the password, it wasn't going to do anything if he did. But this was faster, and they needed to find their fellow Autobots as soon as possible.

Memory, CPU, the whole works. All of it still had some sort of history logged in even though the humans never saw it. The little movements of the tiny processors and circuitry. Jazz knew what he could do. He worked the CPU, checking all the little details he could find in it. He had to figure out just what operators he could do to make it decrypt the hard drive without even accessing it. It knew how, he just had to coax the details out of it.

"Come on, give up your secrets." Jazz said, thinking how he would rather ask a Decepticon to give their information up rather than to hack them that way. It was always messy, disgusting.

Repulsive.

But the computer was cold and unfeeling and unaware of everything. It just preformed operations as ordered to. Jazz tangled with the CPU and memory, working on the precise operations needed to untangle the web of encryption. There was no resistance, no wavering, no begging but he had to handhold the computer the entire way.

"Please work with me here." Jazz begged the computer.

"Jazz?" Ratchet reached out to the saboteur.

"I have it Ratch." Jazz answered, shacking off Ratchet's weak touch on him. He forced the CPU to work on his little program at maximum capacity, which was easy as there were no other processes demanding the CPU's attention. He hated this part. He had never been a victim of having his brain hijacked but he knew the stories people said. They were rendered blind and deaf, not sensing anything outside of themselves. The doctors said that in this state they would just cease to be for a moment until they could get their brain modules working for themselves now, but all the stories were same, they were stuck in this void of nothing and aware of themselves. And when unable to tell the passing time some experienced the brief terror of nothing for just a moment, and some experienced prolonged void for a long time.

Jazz didn't manage to quell the whimper that had been building up in him.

The process finally stopped after half a minute, the hard drive decrypted and open for anyone to read with the vital intel of where the Autobots had been taken. Jazz turned on his optics, not realizing he had shut them off a while ago, and he looked at his victim as he let his hands off the computer casing. A beige thing just stood there, with Chip quickly working on the keyboard as he had noticed that Jazz had accomplished his task.

"Jazz?" Ratchet asked again.

"I'm not so hot right now." Jazz said. "I need a moment." He never let his optics off the computer he had just violated so, attacked and paralyzed and condemned into the void of nothing.

And it was still just cold, unfeeling and unaware.


End file.
